The Seeds Trilogy Complete Collection: The Sowing, The Reaping, The Harvest (including The Prelude)

by K. Makansi

  “—is long gone thanks to Demeter’s homework and Rhinehouse’s talents,” Eli says, pulling Remy back into his arms. “Now you’re stuck with me.”

  “When’s the rest of the crew getting here?” Miah asks. “The larder’s still stocked to the gills. We’re gonna feast like Americans at Thanksgiving.”

  I laugh. “Without the vomiting, I hope.”

  “No vomiting allowed,” Eli says. “But it’s not going to be all turkey and stuffing. We’ve got plenty of work to do. We’ll explain when Soren gets here. In the meantime, let’s get you two a drink, and you can help us with dinner.”

  I groan. “Please tell us you did not bring Firestone’s ‘swill’ with you.”

  Miah slings an arm around my shoulders and leads the way inside. “We certainly did not. Eli assured me that Kanaan would have a fine selection of old vintages. True to his word, we found almost two hundred bottles from some of the Sector’s best vineyards.”

  “How come nobody else came with you? Why just the two of you?”

  “Well, with Kenzie expecting a baby and all—”

  “What?” Remy shouts. “Are you serious?”

  “Found out a few weeks ago. She’s just now starting to show.”

  Eli drags Remy into the kitchen to help him with the torte, Remy peppering him with questions about Jahnu and Kenzie as they walk. As excited as I am about the news, I want to give them time to catch up, and cooking doesn’t sound appealing to me right now. So I dodge Miah’s request to help with the tomato sauce, and take the opportunity to familiarize myself with the house. I wander through the rooms, amazed by how much of it is falling apart—and how much is still intact. Doors and floors have warped slightly in the seasonal cycles, and most of the plumbing is no longer functional. Outside, the garden is in utter disarray, but somehow still beautiful. I end up standing on the dock that overlooks Lake Okaria, where, four years ago, I kissed Remy for the first time as the sun set behind us.

  The memory seems like it comes from a different world. It’s almost hard to believe we’re the same people. The house, then, was bustling with energy. Green things bloomed everywhere. Rosemary and lavender sprigs dusted every room. The windows were thrown open to the daylight, and every morning the smell of Kanaan’s fresh bread filled the air. The kiss came on the tail end of a summer that felt endless. Tai and Eli were hiding out upstairs, and something new and different seemed to be happening with Remy, too. We’d been playing cards on the dock on a hot, windless day, when she slapped the back of my hand and yelled in triumph.

  She didn’t pull her hand away. I turned mine over and held hers. She half-smiled, as though suddenly unsure what to do, how to react. I didn’t know either, but I knew what I wanted, and she wasn’t afraid. I leaned over a little ways, and her eyes felt like anchors, pulling me down. I gave myself over to the weight of the moment and pressed my lips to hers. I’d kissed girls before, and she told me later she’d kissed other boys, but this was different. Like seeing a piece of art for the first time that makes you feel something in a powerful way. Like the first time you’re fully conscious of yourself in your body and in the world. Like the first time you’re aware of how alive you really are.

  That’s what it was like, kissing her.

  It seems incomprehensible, now, that we could have been so carefree. I can’t even remember how it felt.

  In the garden, many of the plants have either grown wild or died because they needed tending. And the house, with its peeling paint, broken pipes, and busted windows, reminds me that buildings, like people, need constant care and maintenance. But the dock, at least, is mostly unchanged. There are a few soft, rotting spots, and the paint is gone, but the structure remains.

  “Hey,” Remy says, startling me. Her fingers creep around my waist, and she rests her head in the space between my shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Just thinking.”

  “What about?”

  “How everything is different. Meera, and Bunqu. The last time we were here together, the world seemed so perfect, so certain. Now everything is broken, overgrown, lost. Somehow we have to put it all back together.”

  She comes around to my side and wraps one arm behind my back. We stand there like that, watching the sun set over the lake, for a long time.

  An hour or so later, Miah is popping the cork on a second bottle of wine. “I’m glad you decided to give Vale a shot.” He’s beaming at Remy. “He’s only been talking about you for three years.”

  I flush and glare at him.

  “She’s been talking about you for three years, too,” Eli pipes up. Remy takes my hand in hers and smiles. “Or trying not to.”

  “I’m glad we had the same idea.”

  The walkie-talkie on the table crackles with Soren’s voice. “We clear to approach?”

  I pick it up. “Come on in. Dinner’s ready.”

  “Good, we’re starving,” Soren says.

  While we’d waited, Remy fashioned a centerpiece from pine boughs and sprays of yellow forsythia plucked from her grandfather’s riotous garden. Miah and Eli prepped a meal based entirely on canned vegetables and dried grains from Kanaan’s root cellar—beans stewed in a spicy tomato sauce served over rice and a medley of vegetables. Eli’s torte came out perfectly, and Remy found dozens of jars of peaches and apricots.

  “See if there’s any forks,” Remy calls.

  “What, do you think someone waltzed in and stole the silverware?” Miah asks. Remy makes a face at him, even as he returns with a fistful of forks and knives.

  The door creaks as it opens wide, revealing Soren, Osprey, and Saara against a deepening night sky.

  “What the hell?” Soren says, his mouth hanging open in astonishment.

  “Welcome!” Miah gestures to the table, as if he’s the host of a grand dinner party.

  “How did you—?” Osprey turns and looks outside, like she’s searching for some means of transport.

  “Wondering how we got here, Wayfarer?” Miah says.

  “Wondering what you’re doing here,” Soren retorts.

  “Once Rhinehouse fixed me up, the Director essentially kicked me out.” Eli grins. “Said she couldn’t stand to look at me for one more day and she wanted me out of her sight.”

  “The Resistance needed an outpost closer to Okaria as we’re—” Miah pauses and glances at Eli before continuing “—working on getting our food to the people in the city.”

  “We also needed a comm nexus, a place where Outsider and Resistance operatives could stay as they’re passing through. So far, it’s been too risky to get this close to the city. But Gabriel suggested using this place,” Eli nods at Remy, who straightens at her father’s name, “since not many people come this way. Miah and I—err—volunteered.”

  “He means ‘were kicked out,’” Miah says in a mock-whisper. “After our stunt with the Sarus, we—”

  “With the what?” Soren interrupts, cupping a hand behind his ear as though he hadn’t heard.

  “The Sarus,” Miah says, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s parked outside. Cloaked. That’s why you didn’t see it on the way in.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t knock yourself out like Vale.” Eli hands each of them a glass of wine.

  “Speaking of cloaking,” I start, “how are we supposed to hide here with an airship in the backyard without some Sector drone taking notice of our activities?”

  “Firestone took care of that for us.” Miah sits at the head of the table. “Engineered up a dozen little multi-frequency scramblers that we’ve strung from the highest branches we could reach. Created a nice little perimeter in which we should be able to operate without notice.”

  There’s a long pause while Soren and Osprey take all this in. Saara, for her part, looks completely overwhelmed. Eli stares at her as if noticing her for the first time.

  “Who are you?” he asks. Eli’s never been one for pleasantries.

  “Saara Lyon,” sh
e says automatically.

  “You’re Hana’s sister.” Eli’s eyes widen as he realizes who she is.

  “Older by a year.”

  “Eli, Miah, I’d like to formally introduce you to Saara Lyon, our newest Resistance member.” Remy gestures for Saara to sit next to her. “She was at the vigil today. In some of the finest body paint I’ve ever seen.” I can see remnants of the red and gold paint on Saara’s arms and chest, but most of it has sweated or rubbed off.

  “You never said how that went,” Eli says, turning to Remy.

  “We can tell you over dinner.” I pick up a bowl of poached apricots and begin to serve. “Saara, Soren, and Osprey need to eat after hiking all the way out here.”

  “And I need to take my boots off,” Saara says, already unlacing. “I think I have blisters the size of dinner plates.”

  16 - REMY

  Spring 89, Sector Annum 106, 22h21

  Gregorian Calendar: June 16

  A hush falls over us as we as stretch out around the fire crackling in my grandfather’s old stone fireplace. It’s closing in on eleven, but my bones feel like it must be two or three in the morning. For the past ten days, we’ve been loading and unloading, helping various Resistance teams move food, seeds, and MealPaks. Unlike teamsters working for the Sector, we don’t have the benefit of heavy-duty loading drones. We do have the benefit of the newfangled scrambles Firestone put together. Besides the ones Eli and Miah used to create a perimeter around the house, we’ve got another dozen or so we set up around every loading and unloading site.

  “Another bottle?” Jeremiah pops the stopper on yet another one of my grandfather’s older vintages and holds it aloft.

  “If anyone said no, would that have stopped you?” Soren asks, his voice loaded with a heavy dose of Soren Skaarsgard sarcasm. Stretched out on the floor, he holds out two glasses while Osprey, curled up on the couch behind him, runs a fingertip up and down the back of his ear lobe, making me want to scratch my own.

  Since we arrived at my grandfather’s, we’ve had several visitors, including Chariya, one of the Outsiders we met a few months ago, but mostly, we’ve been doing backbreaking labor, strategizing with Zeke’s team, and arguing about our next moves with the Director. We’ve also been brainstorming about what Meera’s final message, follow the acorns to the tree, might mean. Chariya had some ideas, but she left shortly after she arrived, promising to return as soon as possible. What “soon” means to an Outsider, I have no idea. Osprey says, with Chariya, it could mean tomorrow or next year.

  But tonight we got the best surprise of all: Zeke arrived with Bear in tow, grown at least a few centimeters since the last time I saw him. He’s on his way from Farm 5 to 3, colloquially called Mill Town and Cloverfield. When the Director told him Eli and Miah were setting up a waystation outside Okaria, and that Soren and I had made it here safely, Bear decided to take a detour and visit us between stops.

  “It’s been wild out there, ya know?” Bear says, adding another log to the fire, settling back, and watching as the flames lick at the wood. “Lotta people coming to our side. Stepping up, telling others, wanting something different. Something more. Many still don’t understand, but our numbers are growing. And we’re getting ready to show what we’re made of.”

  So much has happened since Vale and I went to Okaria nearly three months ago. While Vale was isolated with his parents and I was connecting with Meera, Snake, and the other Outsiders in the capital, Bear has led the charge to rally Farm workers to the cause of the Resistance. He says many of the workers have begun to see how their lives have been manipulated. How they’ve been used. The devastation at Round Barn was the spark that lit the torch, and now the darkness has been illuminated, as he put it so eloquently. As he talks, I feel like a proud parent, my heart expanding with every word. I suppose I still feel responsible for Bear—and for Sam.

  “It’s really Gabriel,” Bear says, with a nod my direction. “Without his inspiration, we never would have been able to recruit so many so quickly.”

  I look across the room, locking eyes with Eli. For a moment, the deep ache of memory, of missing what used to be—the happy family with the quiet poet, the passionate doctor, the brilliant older sister, and me, the eager, inquisitive artist—threatens to breach the wall I’ve built up around that part of my life. I blink back tears.

  Vale squeezes my hand. “What’s Gabriel’s role in all this?”

  “He helps me work out what to say.” Bear holds up his glass to the firelight as if seeking wisdom within the shifting, swirling liquid. “But mostly, he tells stories about long ago heroes who stood up for their rights without hurting anyone. Dr. Rhinehouse says us workers have been programmed to shy away from violence. That’s why some of us just kinda turn off. Like a light goes out inside. Since folks don’t want to hurt anyone, they turn away from what frightens them or makes them angry. So Gabriel tells stories about other folks just like us. To make us brave. Folks like Thoreau, Gandhi, King, Havel. Folks I never even heard of in the whole of my life ’fore now.”

  I’m not surprised Bear and the other Farm workers are inspired by my father’s stories. “Stories have power,” my dad used to say when we’d talk about our passions: me, drawing and painting; him, stories and poetry. “Artists tell stories with pictures so those who are deaf to the truth can see it instead. Poets tell stories with words so those who are blind to the truth can hear it instead.”

  “But most of all,” Bear says, “Gabriel listens to the workers’ own stories. Prob’ly the first time a livin’ soul’s ever bothered. Now we got lots of folks willing to stand up for themselves, workers from every Farm in every quadrant, all willing to tell their stories, say what’s on their minds. And town folk, too. Working with Zeke, we got real, educated people ready to stand beside Farm folk. And there’s a whole lot of them. We’re gettin’ well mobilized.”

  “What are you mobilizing for?” Saara asks.

  “We can’t fight back without guns and airships like the Sector has, like Evander has. And we don’t want anyone else to die, ya know? So we’ve got to go at it different way. Right now, we’re keeping things quiet, acting like nothing’s changing. But soon, things’ll be different.”

  “How?” I ask, leaning forward.

  Bear looks at the floor.

  “Well, I’ve been workin’ on this idea …”

  “What idea?” Soren presses. Ever since Soren and I met Bear on that boat two seasons ago, we’ve tried to welcome him into our fold as much as possible.

  “None of us want a repeat of Round Barn. But what if we take that same concept, the idea of taking a stand, rising up peacefully, and demand that all of us be treated with respect. That each one of us be treated like human beings. And what if we did this in the capital? Right in front of Assembly Hall, where everyone can see us. Evander can’t bring his fireships down on us then. So my idea is to organize a march with workers from every Farm and every factory town coming in to the city of their own free will. Thousands of people standing in front of our capital demanding our liberty. What happens then?”

  No one says a word. I lean back and close my eyes, listening to the pop and crackle as a piece of damp wood catches. I can see the people, shoulder to shoulder, silent, facing Assembly Hall. Is it even possible? How could Corine or Evander or Aulion take violent action against a peaceful demonstration in the middle of the city? I turn to Vale.

  “What do you think?”

  “How many can you mobilize?” he asks.

  Bear glances at Miah and then says, “We estimate we’ve got almost three thousand volunteers so far.”

  “Three thousand?” Saara nearly chokes on her wine.

  “And we’re aiming for more.”

  Vale lets out a long low whistle. I can almost hear his mind working as he pushes himself up from his relaxed slouch. The enormity of Bear’s plan is overwhelming. All this time I’ve been hiding out in Okaria, Bear has been spreading his message—and now the message has gone vir
al. If he’s got three thousand people who have already volunteered to march to the capital city at his command, how many more will rally to our cause when the march begins?

  “Do you have a date picked out?” Vale asks. “What are you thinking in terms of logistics? Communications? Coordinating the movement of so many people so that everyone arrives at the same time?”

  “Workin’ on all that,” Bear says. “It’s a big project, ya know? We’re shooting for right after the solstice, maybe the twenty-third or twenty-fourth. Miah and Eli been workin’ with Zeke and some of Osprey’s friends to monitor Sector freight lines. There’s some maglev trains that run between the Farm depots and Okaria once a day. Same thing with the factory towns. Moving stuff back and forth ’tween the countryside and the capital. We’re hopin’ to get a lot of folks on board those trains.”

  Vale nods, considering. Of all the people here, he probably has the most comprehensive knowledge of the Sector’s large-scale infrastructure. “You’ve got the schedules?”

  “The routes are controlled remotely by computer,” Zeke says, “but there are onboard operators with override capabilities in case of delays or mechanical problems. I’ve got an old friend who helps set the schedules.”

  “So you can get people loaded without the central system knowing,” Vale says, following Zeke’s train of thought.

  “And,” Eli says with a dangerous look, “we’ll take care of the onsite operators if we have to.”

  “Replace them with our own people,” Miah says.

  “Still,” Zeke says, “it’s easier said than done. It used to be the train operators rode unaccompanied, no guards. Since Round Barn, no train leaves a station without four soldiers onboard.”

  “There’s been growing malcontent on the Farms over the last few years.” Vale leans back in his chair, stretching. “But nothing on the scale of Round Barn. I’m not surprised they increased security.”

  “Are you worried about infiltration?” I ask. “Someone overhearing your plans and tipping off the Enforcers? Or loyalists in the Factory towns? What about Evander?”